I've added a series of new pages answering frequently asked questions about EVs. These can be found under the Electric Vehicles section of this web site. The pages are listed under Frequently Asked...[more]
As part of its new budget, the Canadian federal government has announced a new $5,000 incentive for electric cars that cost less than $45,000, however, it excludes Tesla vehicles.
There are four route planners I've used for planning trips in our Chevy Bolt. I've reported on my experience with EV Trip Planner, Green Race, and Chevy's own Energy Assist App. The first two are...[more]
I previously reported on my experience using three different EV trip planners. See Energy Consumption Estimators, Trip Planners, and the Chevy Bolt EV. Since then I've been experimenting with A...[more]
We recently completed a round trip from Bakersfield to Furnace Creek in Death Valley National Park in our Chevy Bolt. We've done this trip many times in a gasoline-powered car, but this was the first...[more]
The Kern-Kaweah Chapter of the Sierra Club will lead a hike among the wind turbines on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) at 9:00 am on Saturday May 18, 2019 near Tehachapi, California. [more]
No, Mr. President, windmills don’t cause cancer. What they do cause is the creation of thousands of jobs and businesses in Kern County, and technical innovations that help keep America energy...
Thank you, Mr. President, for the timely attention. My recent book about windmills, or what we call wind turbines, has been languishing in a New York warehouse not far from Trump Tower--until now,...[more]
Thank you, Mr. President, for the timely attention. My recent book about windmills, or what we call wind turbines, has been languishing in a New York warehouse not far from Trump Tower — until now,...
The French offshore Vertical-Axis Wind Turbine developer Nénuphar closed its doors in early 2018. Their web site is dark, though there are several Nenuphar Animations on YouTube.com.[more]
One of the conclusions then is no doubt true today: "There is no well established relationship between Darrieus wind turbine prototype costs and volume production costs because only one company,...[more]
The report was prepared by Lawrence Schienbein Associates, Kennewick, Washington.[more]
Elsevier has published an extensive survey of attempts at building commercial Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines on its digital platform. The print version of the survey by Swedish academic Erik Möllerström...[more]
In a startling disparity, a private think tank puts the cost of addressing the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster between 35 trillion yen and 81 trillion yen ($315 billion and $728 billion), compared...
World-renowned wind energy expert Paul Gipe of Bakersfield joined The Californian's Robert Price for his weekly "One on One" webcast to talk about California's energy future. Gipe said PG&E's...
Gregory Jaczko was an outsider. He wasn’t from the industry. But somehow he was appointed to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, eventually becoming its Chair. His 2019 book, Confessions of a...[more]
Three Japanese energy companies announced last week that they have decided to scrap plans to build a 2 gigawatt (GW) coal-fired power station in the Chiba Prefecture, near Tokyo, saying that the...
The announcement marked a significant shift for Europe’s largest country — a nation that had long been a leader on cutting CO2 emissions before turning into a laggard in recent years and badly...
There are some books that simply bring a smile to your face--even to someone as jaded as I. This is one of them. There is a joy in discovering what the future may hold that comes across in Ulrich...[more]
Hans-Detlef Feddersen sent me a copy of a little picture book celebrating the 25th anniversary of Bürger-Windpark Lübke-Koog. He included a DVD video of interviews with the founders of the...[more]
Benny Christensen knows his windmills. An early anti-nuclear activist and proponent of 100% renewable energy—a photo of him appears in Steven Borish’s Land of the Living—Christensen has now turned...[more]
Excellent news from the EU Court of Justice. In a judgment published yesterday, the EU Commission power grab asserting the right to decide about German renewable energy legislation has been rejected....
Once they reach the fire, they will pump water on that fire to put it out as fast as possible. There will not be an auction set up where water suppliers can enter bids and the cheapest supplier gets...
The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) of Vietnam is planning to introduce a new solar feed-in tariff (FiT) programme from July 1, 2019 that will offer different rates depending on the location...
The role of the government was also important, with the putting in place of a risk-guarantee fund and feed-in tariff for heat.
It then became the blueprint for the Feed-in Tariff, the scheme through which over 800,000 installations would register to receive payment for the energy they share back to the grid.
In 1980 the Department of Energy published a short film titled Wind: An Energy Alternative. The 12-minute film was produced by the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) probably in 1979.[more]
Sex sells. Always has, always will. Sex has been used to sell beer, cars, and even wind energy--well, at least articles about wind energy.[more]
The 1992 report on the project by the Centre de Recherche Energétiques et Municpales reads like so many of the others from the period. In short, the four-year project was a failure for a host of...[more]
Up in the Air is a short film about the wind turbine project in Prince Edward County. For nearly two decades, a group of County residents have been supporting wind energy initiatives. The White Pines...
As the government will be withdrawing the renewable energy Feed-in Tariff from March (income received from selling solar power generated energy into the national grid), Salisbury Community Energy...
Shiloh Temple, a church two miles from downtown Minneapolis, serves more than just the spiritual needs of the community. After a recent update to its roof, this church in North Minneapolis now serves...
Contrary to the ideas promulgated by some opponents of wind generation, most of the substantial investment in wind farms in South Australia is not being paid for by taxpayers or electricity consumers...
At the heart of the problem has been governments’ trust in market solutions without a sharp eye on the shortfalls in market performance and without adequate leadership on the long term outcome the...
It is a meaningless concept at the least and dangerous at its worst
Minnesota’s community solar program hit a record 460 megawatts of operational capacity in November 2018. The chart above shows the progress of projects through the program since August 2015, and the...
Market research firm IHS Markit has published new figures that show the global solar market will still increase by around 11% to 105 gigawatts (GW) in 2018 despite recent cuts to China’s solar policy...
The digital version of Paul Gipe's Wind Energy for the Rest of Us has been re-launched on several platforms at $19.99, 33% off the previous e-book price.[more]
Renewable energy sources such as geothermal have been getting more attention since the 2011 Fukushima disaster exposed the risk — or folly — of nuclear power. . . One expert says geothermal power...
ElectraTherm utilizes Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) and proprietary technologies to generate up to 110kWe of electricity from low temperature water ranging from 77-122°C.
New feed-in-tariffs for hydro-thermal and petro-thermal geothermal have been put forward that would lift maximum tariffs from up to $0.48 to $0.54/ kWh for plants sized 5 MW and below with lower...
